


Point of Divergence

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, Romance, Threesome - F/M/M (in alternate reality)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-02-08 20:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1955799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After leaving the wedding, Sherlock opens the door to 221B and realizes he's stepped into the other Sherlock's world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Point of Divergence：分歧所在](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3434534) by [Maryandmathew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maryandmathew/pseuds/Maryandmathew)



> My first try at magical realism - a far cry from some of the great stories I read last night, but I couldn't go to bed without trying my hand at it.

Sometimes, when Sherlock unlocks the door to 221B and pushes it open, he walks into the other Sherlock’s life.

It happens only now and again, and he always knows it when it does –knows by the smell of the air in the vestibule, the pattern of wear on the familiar carpet, the flicker of the light bulb in the fixture over the stairs. Knows it before he climbs the stairs and encounters the other John.

The stolen moments in the other Sherlock’s life are like stormy nights spent curled up in Mycroft’s bed with Redbeard between them when he was six years old. Warm, and safe, and so utterly right, 

It hasn’t happened since he came back. He’d begun to think the other Sherlock had moved on while he was gone, that the unspeakable spell was broken, that the other residents of 221 had shifted another half step sideways in time, inaccessible forever.

It’s late when he opens the door, and he’s had a glass or two of champagne, so he doesn’t notice the carpet, but the light flickers when he turns it on, and he stops, and smells the air, and looks up the stairs. His heart is in his throat, and he cannot believe his good fortune.

The gods are smiling on him. Taking pity.

This night. This night of all nights – to walk into this life.

He takes off his jacket, his vest, his tie. He hangs them on the banister post, and places the hat on top. In trousers and shirt and dress shoes not loosened by dancing, he climbs the stairs slowly and pushes open the door at the top.

He’s learned to meld into this life without effort at all, and when John looks up from his chair, he smiles at Sherlock, and he is the old John, and there was no fall, and there is no Mary, and there won’t be a baby, or a need for forgiveness.

“You’re late.” John smiles and picks up the remote control. He mutes the telly, and stands, and it is as natural as breathing to walk over to him and kiss him. John is wearing his oldest, most comfortable jeans and a plain blue t-shirt. His feet are bare, but his slippers are on the floor in front of his chair. There are lines near his eyes – laugh lines – crinkles in the skin that the other John does not have. Sherlock is mesmerised by these tiny wrinkles, evidence of a life lived inside a different box.

“You smell like smoke.” John pulls him over to the sofa, not chiding him for smoking, not assuming it was someone else, and they collapse on it together, John nestling up against him. “Was Mycroft an insufferable bore?”

Sometimes, it takes a bit of time for Sherlock to catch on, but he’s good at picking up nuances, and reading clues in expressions, and besides, he’s been reading John for years now, in this life and the other.

“Mycroft is always an insufferable bore,” he says, wrapping an arm around John and pulling him in closer. “You should have been my date tonight – it would have made it almost bearable.” 

In his mind, he’s not talking about a boring diplomatic reception. In his mind, in his reality, he’s just come from a wedding. 

John laughs. “You said you’d never make me go to another one of those things,” he says.

Sherlock smiles. “You’d have hated it. There was dancing.”

John shakes his head. “I’m sorry I’m such a horrible dancer. Did you waltz, then?” 

Sherlock works his fingers along the nape of John’s neck, into his hair. It’s been so long – so very long – since he’s run his fingers through John’s hair, since he’s cuddled with him on the sofa. “The partner I wanted wasn’t available,” he says.

“Pity.” John stretches, and looks over at Sherlock. “If we ever get around to getting married, I’ll take lessons so I don’t embarrass you at our wedding.”

“You could never embarrass me,” Sherlock says. And he wants to say _What are we waiting for?_ and and _I’ll teach you how to dance._

But he doesn’t dare. Doesn’t risk it. Doesn’t want to upset the equilibrium, risk shaking himself out of this other life before the sun rises, before he sleeps with John in his arms again.

He knows the other Sherlock has walked into his 221B, and the flat is cold, and silent, and John isn’t there, and the unmade bed is lined with grief and regret.

“We should go to bed. We’ve got a new client coming in at nine tomorrow morning.”

“Nine? What were we thinking?” Sherlock complains as he stands and follows John into the bedroom.

The longest he’s ever walked in this other Sherlock’s shoes is four days.

Not much else is different in their parallel lives. They know the same people, do the same things, resent Mycroft equally. They chase after criminals, and John does locum work, and Donovan derides them and Lestrade needs them. Sherlock complains and makes horrible messes and John blogs and Mrs. Hudson is _not_ their housekeeper.

He lies in bed now, lanky body curled into John, and for the hundredth time tries to identify the point of divergence. 

For the hundredth time he fails.

What would he have had to do differently to have had this life for himself, all the time, every day?

Sharing one side of the sofa, one bedroom, one bath.

John’s jumpers folded neatly in his chest of drawers.

The right to trace John’s scar with his fingers, to taste it with his lips.

John Watson in his bed, with laugh lines around his eyes.

Sometimes, in this world, and the other, John leaves for work in the morning, and Sherlock watches out the window as he goes. He’s holding a warm mug of tea to his lips, and wearing his dressing gown still. From this position, this vantage point, the divergent lives could be the same. They overlap at points, merge at others, and where they diverge almost no one can see. 

He’d like to stay here forever.

But he thinks of the other Sherlock, alone at the other 221B, and John in Mary’s bed, John with worry lines around his mouth instead of crinkles around his eyes.

There is no rhyme, no reason, to which door he’ll open. 

He pities himself, but pities the other Sherlock living his other life even more.

Someday, he thinks, he’ll put his key in the lock and it won’t fit. The locks will be changed and he’ll be left in the cold.

Looking up at the window from the street down below.

Tangential paths never crossing. 

The other Sherlock Holmes looking out the window, holding a steaming mug of tea, laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, looking down at him with pity.

 

_Fin_

_The very lovely sra_danvers commissioned this art for the story. Thank you Marta and clarice - I am thrilled and honored to be able to include it here!_ ART by [clarice82](http://clarice82.tumblr.com/post/100241855222/johnlock-sketch-commission-point-of-divergence)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One day after work, John returns to the flat he shares with Mary to find another family living there. Naturally, he goes to 221B to see what the hell is going on.
> 
> This can easily stand-alone, but is intended as a parallel piece to "Point of Divergence."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite a few people asked for more of this verse. While I think you wanted to see the other Sherlock trapped in our Sherlock's world, I give you here "our" John encountering the other Sherlock.
> 
> Here - John's first excursion into the alternate reality. 
> 
> This is for [sra_danvers](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sra_danvers/pseuds/sra_danvers), who asked nicely - twice! I'll still give you the piece you were thinking of, but felt this one needed to come first.

Chapter 2

Their flat is inhabited by an Indian couple with two children. 

He stands on the pavement and looks up at the familiar building filled with unfamiliar people and tries not to panic. 

He takes a steadying breath, then turns on his heel and heads to 221B.

He knocks on the door and when Mrs. Hudson opens it to let him in, the light bulb in the entryway flickers. He crinkles his nose. The smell is just slightly off.

Mrs. Hudson scolds him for not using his key. His mouth drops open. There’d been a huge row about that key, when he’d returned it to Sherlock at Mary’s insistence. How could Mrs. Hudson possibly have forgotten?

He doesn’t let on to her that something is wrong – that Mycroft is playing games, or someone is drugging his coffee. He climbs the stairs instead to take it up with Sherlock. 

He still remembers Baskerville.

He tells himself he doesn’t want Mary to be gone. He doesn’t want another family filling their small flat with new smells and sounds and colours. Convinces himself – nearly – that it is so.

Sherlock is sleeping on the sofa. The flat is tidy, tidier than John has ever seen it since he left. John’s chair is just exactly where it should be. His dark blue cardigan is draped over the back, his slippers sit on the floor in front of it. 

He blinks, turns in place.

There are other tells. 

His coffee mug drying in the dish drainer, the Sunday Times crossword puzzle folded on the sofa table. 

His laptop on the kitchen table, his phone’s data cable plugged into the side.

John licks his lips. Confused. Mesmerised.

He walks to the table, opens the laptop. Enters user name and password.

The monitor unlocks, and his old blog is up. 

He hasn’t updated the blog in six months. 

He looks at the blog. Yesterday’s date. The _Case of the Door with No Keyhole._

Yesterday, John worked until five thirty, went to the gym after work, and stayed home the entire evening after that. 

“You’re not still trying to make that one interesting?”

Sherlock is up, padding across the room toward him. He stops behind John and drops a kiss on his head, hand resting comfortably on John’s shoulder, then goes off to the loo.

John stares at the computer until he hears the toilet flush. The two points of contact – head and shoulder –throb with the memory of the casual, deliberate touch. He remains there two minutes longer, forcing himself to inhale, exhale, until Sherlock calls out to him from his bedroom.

John stands, walks down the corridor, stops in front of Sherlock’s open bedroom door.

_Their_ bedroom.

His clothes are here. His things. It smells like him. Like them. His dressing gown hangs beside Sherlock’s on the back of the cupboard door. 

Sherlock is changing clothes.

“Angelo’s tonight?” he asks.

Dumbly, John nods.

He is watching Sherlock undress. Watching pale skin appear as Sherlock disrobes, stands there in blue briefs as he selects a shirt. Pulls it on and begins to button it as he tells John that Lestrade has another case for them, a cold case just reopened, and perhaps he should bring his gun.

John glances at the bed. He sleeps on the right. He knows by the nightstand. It’s clean, no coffee mugs, no box of nicotine patches. 

He walks over, opens the drawer.

Reaches back, behind the strip of condoms, the half-gone tube of lube, and grasps the familiar gun.

Pockets it.

If he is drugged, it’s working for him. He’ll take the effect, keep it.

If he’s hallucinating, he probably shouldn’t have his gun.

Data. He needs more data.

“You’re quiet.” Sherlock is buckling his belt. “Bad day at the surgery?”

_Slide into it, John._

He shrugs. “Tired is all.” He looks at Sherlock and Sherlock is looking at him and he forces himself not to look away.

He can’t say who moves first, but kissing Sherlock is as natural as yawning, as keying in his password, as sliding into a cab. There are arms around his waist, lips moving on his, and as first kisses go, it is warm and comfortable and familiar. It isn’t desperate, or demanding, or awkward, and Sherlock’s lips move from his mouth to his stubbled jaw. 

“I won’t keep you out so late tonight, then,” he says with a smile.

“Liar,” John returns, then moves an arm behind Sherlock’s neck and pulls him down into another kiss, deep and hungry, then buries his face in his neck. 

He wills his body not to shudder, to quake, as all his secret dreams come true in one fell sweep. Tears threaten. He holds them back with steely resolve.

It may all be over in a moment. The drug will wear off, the confusion end. He’ll be in hospital, or tied to a madman’s chair. Or he’ll be in bed with Mary, and he won’t have a key to 221B, and his slippers will be in their flat across town, and his gun at the bottom of the Thames.

He suddenly, rashly, hopes that moment never comes.

Sherlock slides his wallet off the dresser and tucks it in his pocket, then tosses something at John.

John grabs the key from the air.

“You left it this morning,” Sherlock says. 

John clutches it in his hand. His again. _His_.

He removes his wallet, tucks the key into the small compartment where he always kept it. It fits perfectly, slipping into the mold it left the two years it lay there, unused, while Sherlock was away.

Sherlock locks the door behind them as they leave and when he steps outside onto the street, extends his hand for John’s.

This world may be mad, but no madder than the one he left behind.

He takes Sherlock’s hand, and pretends he is the John who walks hand in hand down Baker Street with Sherlock, who has a key to 221B, who sleeps in the bedroom downstairs.

No one seems to see him for the imposter he is.


	3. The Flickering Bulb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a row with Mary and goes to 221B to vent. When he opens the door, the light bulb is flickering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And herein ends the first arc of this series - which somehow has become a series, even though it was intended as a one-shot. Thanks to all for the great ideas - I do appreciate them.

Chapter 3

Months have passed and Sherlock has remained firmly fixed in his own London, his own 221B, weekly dinners with John, sometimes with John and Mary. An occasional case they work on together, usually at the price of even more time before the next one is allowed.

John has given up the key to 221B. John has _returned_ the key. 

John has given up the gun. _Disposed_ of it.

A year has passed since Mary lost the baby. There is no new pregnancy. 

John no longer cycles to work.

Sherlock has started smoking again.

John has found himself in the other London with the other Sherlock living the other life three times more in the last six months. Each time, he found the Indian family in his flat again. Each time, he turned on his heel and went directly to 221B, so relieved, so unexpectedly hopeful, that tears stung his eyes.

Today, he’s gone directly to 221B after leaving work early. He’s had a row with Mary and is not ready yet to face her.

The light bulb is flickering when he steps inside the entry way. His eyes move upward and focus on the bulb. It flickers again.

His heart is in his throat as he climbs the stairs. He takes his time. Collects his thoughts. Centers himself in this world, prepares to open the door to _this_ Sherlock.

This Sherlock is panting – staring out the window.

“John!” His eyes slide to the window, then back to John. He is startled, unsettled. “I’m sorry – I just got here. I’ve been watching for you – I didn’t see you come in.”

John swallows. He has no explanation and he doesn’t offer one. His eyes rake over Sherlock. This Sherlock. Because it’s allowed. Because this Sherlock is his.

“Is something wrong?” John asks, hates asking. He doesn’t want Sherlock to study him too closely. To have reason to suspect anything.

“No – no.” Sherlock seems indecisive at first, but shakes his head firmly. “I missed you is all. When I got here – home. You weren’t here.”

“I’m here now,” John says. He gives a tentative smile.

“God yes,” Sherlock says, and he is walking quickly toward John now, and John steps toward him so that they meet somewhere in the middle, closer to the door than to the window.

Sherlock hugs him before he kisses him, arms wrapped around his back and shoulders, pulling him against him, feeling his solid weight. Sherlock’s fingers are digging into his flesh with a sort of desperation John doesn’t understand.

Perhaps they fought, John thinks. Perhaps one of them did something that needs forgiveness.

John makes the first move toward the kiss, sliding one of his hands from Sherlock’s back to the nape of his neck, running his fingers through his hair, cupping his head, pulling it down.

The kiss is not a welcome home, is no familiar press of lips and gentle swipe of tongue. Sherlock cannot contain the need to devour, John can do nothing less than possess. 

They are on the bed within a minute, blindly tearing at each other’s clothing, succumbing to the unspoken need.

It is fast, and furious, over so quickly that John wonders how long it has been for each of them. They are left panting and sated, sweat-soaked and spent.

“God I love you.” John presses a kiss to Sherlock’s shoulder.

Sherlock works his hands on either side of John’s head, frames his face, kisses his mouth, then lies there, gazing at John’s face. 

He blinks.

His focuses on John’s eyes. Blinks again.

He raises his hand, touches the corner of John’s eyes with his index finger. Runs the finger slowly out to John’s hairline. 

There are no laugh lines there. 

Sherlock looks up, away from John, his eyes scan the bedroom.

And suddenly, like a plunge into an ice-cold pool, John sees what he sees.Sherlock’s room. _Sherlock’s_ room. One nightstand. One dressing gown. 

Their eyes lock. Realization. They both know. They both erred.

His heart is no longer in his throat. It is in his belly, plummeting toward his feet. He makes a quick move to roll away from Sherlock, to gain ground, to stand up with the bed between them.

Sherlock is not so accommodating. He grips John’s wrists 

“How long, John?”

John stares at him, mouth open, eyes fixed on Sherlock’s eyes. The hands that grip his wrists are steel bands. His pulse throbs. His heart races.

Sherlock is predatory. He kisses John’s neck, just below his ear.

“How long? Tell me how long. How many times?”

“Three. Three other times. Only three.”

This is madness. Impossible. He turns his head, butts his cheek up against Sherlock’s face, shudders as the lips move to his Adam’s apple, as teeth graze his skin. He tips his head back and Sherlock’s lips taste his neck, move down to his chest. They have just rutted together, brought each other off, and this - _this_ \- is completely, utterly different.

With an effort, he breaks free of Sherlock’s hold and rolls atop his prey. 

They are madmen now, tumbling together on the bed, arms about the other, kissing, sobbing, panting.

Relief. Overwhelming, mind-draining, relief. Freedom won, the impassable barrier broken, no more borrowed moments, stolen evenings.

This is Sherlock. Sherlock who solves cases and comes home to 221B, whose dreams are nightmares full of might-have-beens, who has started smoking again and who is forever and always thinking about more powerful drugs to fill the emptiness.

This is John. John who does locum work, who is married to Mary, who watches too much telly, who’s given up biking to work, who solves cases with Sherlock when his limp comes back, when Mary sighs and bites her bottom lip and lets him go.

John with no laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. 

John whose gun is at the bottom of the Thames.

This is their 221B, with the light bulb in the entryway that just today began to flicker.

An hour later, they’re still in bed, wrapped together, and John has learned every inch of Sherlock’s skin, and stolen his breath, and has made a good start on the laugh lines Sherlock loves so much in the other John. 

And when Sherlock gets up and announces he’s going to change the light bulb above the stairs, John goes with him. 

He’ll leave nothing to chance.

They leave the flat, finally, when evening has fallen, and make their way to John’s flat, to talk with Mary – together.

The smell is off when they step inside. John looks at Sherlock, half panicked, then takes the stairs two at a time.

Mary is not here.

There is another family living in their flat. 

An Indian family with two small children.

John leans his head against the doorframe and weeps.


	4. Beyond a Gauzy Veil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twelve years have passed, and John and Sherlock seem fixed in the flat with the flickering light bulb.

A dozen years go by.

So much time, so many years, that Sherlock and John, living the life of the other Sherlock, the other John, stop watching for the steady-burning bulb, the familiar patterns in the carpet, and the unfamiliar smell of the vestibule becomes ordinary, everyday. 

They are together. Happy. They share a bed, a flat, a life. Sherlock solves cases. Gets into mischief. John’s blog becomes even more popular. 

Sherlock’s hair begins to grey at the temples.

Molly marries a pathologist who is ten years younger. They have a child – a daughter – and are happy, as happy, nearly, as Sherlock and John.

Mrs. Hudson’s niece moves into 221C. She takes to Sherlock and John as well as her aunt has, but she, also, is not their housekeeper.

Mycroft is diagnosed with lung cancer. Surgery, radiation, chemo. 

Recovery.

Sherlock stops smoking.

Lestrade is in line for Chief Superintendent.

The Indian family moves out of the flat John shared with Mary on the other side. A blind man moves in with his teenage son.

Mary never appears.

They accept. They flourish. Perhaps they should forget, but they never forget.

They don’t forget their parallel lives, on the other side of the door, up the stairs in the colourless flat, across town in the comfy little apartment on the first floor with the tiny second bedroom just perfect for a nursery.

That life, inhabited, they imagine, if it exists at all, by the other Sherlock, the other John, is beyond a gauzy veil, on the other side of midnight. They discuss it, sometimes, when the lights are out, and darkness obscures their features, and they lie in each others arms.

What they would do if one of them were to find himself on the other side. Married to Mary Morstan. Alone in 221B. Drinking too much, smoking too much, falling into old patterns of self-neglect, self-abuse. Cocaine, nicotine patches, scotch and a loaded gun.

But it doesn’t happen, and they learn not to live on the edge of fear, and are thankful for the gift given them that day, a dozen years ago, when they found themselves, together, on this side of the flickering light.

But the day comes when Sherlock, forced by Molly to go home to rest while John sleeps off the anesthesia following an emergency appendectomy, opens the door to a 221B he doesn’t recognise.

There is a disorder here of a kind he’s never before experienced. 

He doesn’t even consider that there’s been a burglary – that the flat has been ransacked.

This is a disorder of a different kind.

His mouth compresses into a tight line. He chews his bottom lip.

The flat is quiet. He’s the only one here.

But there are dishes in the kitchen, a dirty bowl on the table. A plate of stale toast. Clothing – not all his – draped over chairs. 

He’d have thought this was no longer his flat, but the skull on the mantel, the microscope on the table, say otherwise.

As do the photographs – tucked beside the skull, against the mirror.

John and Mary. John and Mary and a baby. John, Mary, Sherlock. John and Sherlock, wearing suits and ties both, arms around each other. The three of them with a boy of nine or ten. A boy so obviously John’s that Sherlock’s heart skips a beat and he reaches for the photograph, lifts it, and looks his fill.

He peeks into the sitting room. School books. A uniform jacket and tie. His violin just where it should be. John’s house shoes and a pair too small to be either his or John’s.

He opens the bedroom door. His clothing. John’s. 

There is no sign of Mary.

His head is pounding, nearly exploding. He cannot absorb this, contain this. It isn’t real. Not for him.

He leaves the flat quickly, as silently as he can, and in his heart is a fervent wish that the door will open to his London, to his Baker Street. That John is in hospital – doing fine, recovering after a close call.

How did he not see this?

That the John and Sherlock who crossed to this side a dozen years ago would come together here as well, would find each other, would not let the problem of Mary keep them apart.

That Mary was already pregnant, no doubt, when last they crossed over.

But he knows now that crossing over is no longer a curiosity, that identity can no longer be feigned.

His John is a father. His John does not know his son.

John’s son. _John’s_ son.


	5. The Woman in the Cab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock, back in his original reality after twelve years gone with his John, flees 221B and hails a cab. He is not prepared for who steps out of it.

The taxi that pulls up in front of 221B at Sherlock’s summons is not empty.

He steps back in surprise as Mary Morstan, hair darker, longer, eyeglasses pushed up on her head, steps out and throws herself, uninvited, into his arms. 

The cabbie places a blue and green roller bag beside them on the pavement. Sherlock glances at the baggage tag. PRG – Prague, then. She’s been in Prague. The cabbie coughs. Sherlock keeps one awkward arm around Mary, who is still clinging to him, clutching him, as he reaches for his wallet and pays the fare.

He has not seen Mary Morstan in a dozen years. 

“John’s last text said he sent you home to take a nap,” she says. Her voice breaks. “He said Liam was out of surgery and doing fine.” 

“He is. He’s fine. Everything’s fine.” The words are easy. They are merely words. Assurances. 

Liam. The boy – her son, John’s son – is Liam.

“He’s alright, then? Really? I thought – when I saw you here – I thought you were hurrying back to the hospital.”

“He’s fine,” Sherlock says, hoping the words are true. “He’s resting. He’ll be happy to see you.”

“You’ll come with me then?” She has released him at last and is pulling her bag toward the door. “I tried so hard to get in last night – but I was on standby.” She turns and faces him, studying him. She smiles but her face is tired, haggard. “Thank you for being there, Sherlock. John said you were utterly fantastic through all this and hardly insufferable at all.” 

He realizes he’s smiling. John - _his_ John – might have said that.

She reaches up and touches his face, caresses his cheek lightly with the back of her hand. He wants to cringe at the touch but only smiles. She smiles back – distracted, not really seeing him.

She is a worried mother, exhausted from her travels, a Mary he does not know.

The take her bag inside. She rolls it to the bedroom, then ducks into the loo. He stares at the photos on the mantel while she’s in the bathroom. Checks the bedroom again for any sign that a woman resides there. Looks at the ID tag on her travel bag and understands.

She’s not visiting from Prague. She _lives_ in Prague.

They go outside. He hails a cab. 

He closes his eyes, pretends to sleep. They ride in silence.

Her hand slips inside his own where it rests, open, on his thigh. Her thumb runs over his palm, caresses his fingers. Idly. Distractedly. As if she’s done it a hundred times before. As if a liberty like this is commonplace.

She sighs, rests her head on his shoulder.

“An appendectomy. He could have died. He must have been so scared.”

“He had John,” Sherlock says. “He had his dad.”

The word – dad – sticks in his throat.

“Listen to you,” Mary says. Her hand tightens around his. She chuckles. “He had both his dads. `Though I imagine John had his work cut out for him just keeping you in line at the hospital.”

“Hey,” he says, but it’s a weak protest. He wants to tug his hand away from hers, wants her head off his shoulder. He concentrates on breathing, keeps his eyes closed.

“Sherlock,” she says, “we _know_ how you are.”

She giggles, a sound much too young for her fifty-odd years. 

Mary Morstan has an eleven-year old son named Liam who lives with the other Sherlock and John. Mary Morstan lives in Prague. She’s flown in because her son is sick, has just had surgery. She’s riding to the hospital in a cab with Sherlock. She’s holding his hand. Her head rests on his shoulder.

“Sherlock?”

Her voice wobbles. He turns his head at her query.

She kisses him. Lips too soft, too warm, too full.

She tastes of wine. Smells of dust.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “You don’t normally let me do that unless John’s with us.”

“Special circumstance,” he manages, trying not to choke on the words. “Don’t get used to it.”

She smiles, and settles back on his shoulder with a sigh.

He is in hell. 

Ten minutes later, they are walking into a hospital room and Mary rushes forward to John, and John smiles at Sherlock over her shoulder, and Sherlock smiles back, then looks at the bed where a boy, a young boy, face pale, blinks his eyes. 

He smiles, clearly tired, in pain.

“Hey , Dad,” he says.

The boy has John’s eyes, his mouth. The look he gives Sherlock is all John.

_Dad._

Sherlock smiles at the boy. His eyes warm with it, crinkle at the corners.

And as Mary moves in, touching, kissing, greeting her child, John catches Sherlock’s eye again.

They stare at each other. Sherlock attempts a smile.

Colour bleeds from John’s face. He takes a step closer to the bed, glances at Liam, back at Sherlock.

“Going for coffee,” he says to Mary. “Come on Sherlock, you look like you could use some yourself.”

Sherlock’s heart is in his throat as he follows John from the room.


	6. Gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and the 'other' John speak at last.

John’s shoulders are square and level as he leads Sherlock through the corridors of the hospital. He leads him right out the door onto the street, then down the block and into a small park. Sherlock follows. Bolting is out of the question. He is Sherlock Holmes unglued. Sherlock Holmes slipping through the fabric of space. Sherlock Holmes with Mary’s kiss still stinging his lips.

“I could have used that coffee,” Sherlock says as John finds a bench and sits heavily on it, then drops his head onto his hands. Sherlock has seen his John do this a thousand times. He knows to sit down beside him, to wait quietly until he’s worked through the emotion, has put together the words he needs to say.

The slow intake of breath through his nose, the even slower release through his mouth, tell Sherlock - _this_ Sherlock - that John is ready to speak.

“There’s no Liam, is there?” he asks. He glances at Sherlock and there is pain there, on his face. And something like fear. “On your...side?”

Sherlock shakes his head. 

“And Mary?” John has straightened now, but he’s looking straight ahead, and not at Sherlock at all.

“I haven’t seen Mary in twelve years,” he answers.

“Can you control it?” Now he does turn his head, just slightly. There’s a desperate kind of hope in his eyes.

Sherlock bites his bottom lip as he shakes his head. “No.”

John closes his eyes. “You - we - I mean you, and the other … me ...”

For the first time, Sherlock can smile. He nods. “Together. Committed. He means everything to me.”

“Took you long enough.” 

“We had - complications,” Sherlock says. “You seemed to do better with them than we did.” He considers, then looks at John. “Mary kissed me, in the taxi on the way to the hospital.”

John smiles. “We inherited your complications. We made the best of them.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “I gather she lives in Prague now.”

“She does.”

Sherlock studies the war memorial in the center of this little green space. “I don’t know that I can do this. Not with Mary.”

“You don’t have to. You need to go back.” John seems anxious. He is looking at Sherlock now, really looking at him. Studying him. He shakes his head. “God, you’re you. I mean - fuck.” Sherlock remains silent as John takes and releases slow, deliberate breaths. “You don’t want to stay, do you? Here? You don’t want to come back?”

“I _am_ back,” Sherlock replies softly. “But no, I don’t want to stay.”

He thinks of John - his John - in hospital, like his son on this side. Of the other Sherlock, this John’s Sherlock, who will go to visit his son at the hospital and find John there instead, in bed, recovering. No Liam, no Mary.

Will his John know? Will he see through the gauzy veil of fluid space and anesthesia and know that the man at his bedside is the other?

“We knew - we always knew - this might happen,” John is saying now. “We used to talk about it all the time. We had plans, contingencies. What we would do, and say. What we would tell, what we wouldn’t.”  


“As did we,” Sherlock admits. “But we stopped talking about it years ago, as time passed and we remained - where we were.”

John nods. He is strikingly the same. He is every bit Sherlock’s John, from his familiar mannerisms, the intonation of his voice, even, now, the wrinkles around his eyes. 

But this is not John. Not the John who was rushed to the hospital early this morning before the sun had risen, who is lying there now, waking up and expecting Sherlock to be there, holding his hand, terrorizing the nurses, getting in the way. 

Being Sherlock. 

This John is a father. This John’s Sherlock is a parent too. Their world view has shifted, their equilibrium, their gravity. This John came home one day, twelve years ago, to a pregnant wife, and somehow he and _his_ Sherlock made it work. Already together, they brought Mary into the fold and created something - something workable, something shared. Something he and John could never - would never - have done. Something that included a child.

John’s child. _His_ John’s child.

“I know what you’re thinking.” John’s voice is quiet, resigned.

“Sherlock.” 

John glances at him, sighs.

“I know what you’re thinking, Sherlock.”

They both smile. It’s John, and Sherlock is too far away, too removed. He’s the Sherlock of those long-ago days who kept an appropriate distance between them, who believed that sentiment was a liability. Yet now, today, he is itching to take John’s hand, to move over on the bench until their legs are touching. 

“He’s my son. _Our_ son. It doesn’t matter which of us created him. You’ve got to go back, and you’ve got to figure out how to stay there.”

“Alright,” Sherlock agrees automatically, because he loves John and he will always, always, try to make him happy. 

But he has no idea how to go back. How has he ever gone back? Through the door, up the stairs, under the flickering (steady) light bulb. Until the day came when the stars aligned and they - Sherlock and John - crossed over together and found themselves exactly where they wanted to be.

“What will he do?” asks Sherlock quietly. “What will your Sherlock do?” He can no longer resist the pull. He reaches for John’s hand and their fingers entwine. They knit together as they always do, and John’s hand feels exactly the same as it always does. A warm and steady weight, an anchor, the earth pulling in its orbiting moon.

It is comfortable, and right, and entirely wrong. Sherlock would feel it was less of a betrayal if he knew that the other Sherlock was sitting beside John’s bed just now, holding his hand, worrying about him, making unreasonable demands of his caregivers.

“He won’t tell,” John said. “About Liam. We decided that years ago. If this particular scenario happened - if you came across without him.” The hand in his tightens, squeezes until Sherlock’s hand throbs. “If you discovered what he left behind.”

“He’s a beautiful child - he looks like Jo - like you.”

He means it as a compliment. He has only seen the child once, and he was already, inexplicably, impossibly, begun to fall in love. And John must know that. Must hear it in his voice. Must have seen it in his eyes.

“Sherlock - look. I know something you can’t know. Because - well, because I’m John. I’m _him_.” He stresses the word, and he is desperate, frank. “Sherlock - it will drive him mad. The idea of it. That a piece of him is here, and he can’t have it. And we think there’s something to that, something that influences … the crossing. That tips the scales. That makes things unbalanced, and creates this - portal.”

“You want me to go back, and you want me to not tell John what I found here,” he says, voice resigned.

John nods, and relaxes, just enough for Sherlock to see it. To notice. “Yeah. That’s it.”

“My John is in hospital recovering from an emergency appendectomy. There is a chance - a very good chance - that he may not realize I am … not myself.”

John lets out a sound that might be a snort, or a strangled sob. It might be the beginning of maniacal laughter. “I was thinking what a coincidence, but - ”

“The universe is rarely so lazy,” they say together.

Sherlock stands and lets their hands slip apart. “I’m going for a walk. Then I’m going to 221B. I hope to - to not see you again.”

John nods. Sherlock watches his hand clench and unclench, working out the tension exactly as his John does.

“One thing,” Sherlock says. 

John looks up at him, jerks his head in a quick nod.

“How did you know?”

John shakes his head, and the look in his eyes is for _his_ Sherlock but it is _this_ Sherlock who sees it and understands. “You looked at Liam exactly like Sherlock did the first time he laid eyes on him. Falling in love with him because he was _mine_. A part of _me_. You weren’t worried about him lying there in hospital, Sherlock. You were entranced, captivated.” 

They stare at each other a long moment, and Sherlock understands then how a child changes orbits and trajectories and gravity itself.

“Go home, Sherlock,” John says.

Sherlock turns, leaves without looking back. He considers this new knowledge, this new burden, and as he fades into the heart of London where he keeps his heart and home, he knows what he must do.


	7. The Hollow Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock coming meets Sherlock going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst - bitter angst.

Chapter 7

The foyer, ultimately, is the key.

Sherlock, standing in front of 221B, inserts key into lock and steps inside the foyer at the precise moment that Sherlock opens the door at the top of the stairs.

There is a moment - short, poignant - when Sherlock stands frozen on the landing, staring at Sherlock immobile on the stairway.

They are the same man, in the same body, looking out through the same eyes at two utterly different worlds. 

It would be easy to confuse their task, their direction. To get lost in this etherworld. To stare at each other in silence, mirrored faced, mirrored hope, mirrored fears.

Sherlock Holmes is not given to inaction. Each knows, now, that _his_ reality lies just through the door.

The door at the top of the stairs, just past Sherlock.

The door to the street, just past Sherlock.

“How is he?” they both ask, a half\ second off, so that one sounds like a near echo of the other. They both pause, long-fingered hands on the stair rail. Identical smiles flicker and fade. Sherlock at the top of the stairs nods at the other, and waits.

“He is awake. Mary - ” He tries her name on his tongue, lays it beside the kiss she left there. “Mary’s there. She’s with him now.”

Sherlock looks - relieved? Comes down four steps. Stops again. Meets Sherlock’s eyes. “John had difficulties with the anesthesia.” He puts his hand up as Sherlock climbs quickly to the landing, still staring at the other. “No - Sher...Sherlock.” The name catches on his lips. He is unaccustomed to addressing...himself. “He’s fine. It’s fine. _Think_.”

_Oh._

“He doesn't know.”

Sherlock descends two more stairs. He is shaking his head. “ _You_ know.” He is peering at Sherlock, looking right into his mind. “And John?” His smile is forlorn. “John knows.”

“I can’t not love him,” Sherlock says from the landing. “I can’t not love him when he’s part of John.”

Sherlock descends another stair. “I know,” he says. Of course he knows. He knows their minds. “So you must forget him.”

“I can’t forget him. Are you mad?” Sherlock’s eyes are locked with the other, absorbing his pitying look.

“Oh, but you _can_ forget. You can make room.”

“No.” The word leaps from him. Reactive. Immediate. 

An impasse, then.

They stare at each other, one Sherlock steady, insistent, the other defiant.

“You can’t tell him.”

He takes a step down. Another. Pauses, steps down again.

“It will kill him. Kill you. Knowing. Thinking about it. It will eat you alive.”

He is on the landing now, standing beside Sherlock, a pace or two away. They are more than mirror images. More than shadows of the other. Sherlock presses against the wall as the other steps down to the floor, reluctant to even brush shoulders, sidling past each other as they maintain their original trajectories.

“Sherlock. Look at me.”

He doesn't want to look, but he looks all the same, into eyes that pierce him to the marrow, that strip away pretense, until he sees the soul he swears he does not have.

This Sherlock has earned the title of Father. This Sherlock claimed John as his own before there was a Mary, or a roof of St. Bart’s, or a bullet with Sherlock’s name on it.

This Sherlock walked in his world the night of John’s wedding, came home to a dark and empty flat, tried on another man’s life and found it wanting.

This Sherlock who once pitied him has always made the better choices.

“Your choice,” this Sherlock whispers now, in his own seductive voice. “Your choice.”

And he is gone - like that - and the door closes behind him, and Sherlock sinks to the stair and leans against the wall.

His choice.

Retain the knowledge that John Watson left a son on the other side, that a piece of John’s soul, his heart, goes on in another world. Live with that knowledge, unable to tell John, to see him suffer the truth.

Or forget it.

Erase it.

Delete it.

Sherlock closes his eyes. Pulls to the front of his mind the image of the boy in the hospital bed, the boy with John’s eyes, John’s mouth. The boy who smiled when he saw him. The boy who called him Dad. He pulls forward the photographs on the mantel, the uniform and schoolbooks, the slippers on the floor beside John’s. He gathers in the feeling of the flat, the homey disorder of clothing draped over the chair and stale toast on the counter.

He stacks it up in a column narrow and tall, each item obscuring the last, and pushes it into a dusty corner, and drapes over it an alabaster sheet.

Later, pacing the halls of his Mind Palace, he may lean against this pillar, but it has turned to stone, and gathered dust. It is just another column in a marbled courtyard, and he trails fingertips over it, presses his cheek against it, absorbing its quiet texture, finding it hollow and cold.

_TBC_


	8. Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another decade passes and Sherlock and John opt for a quiet retirement. But soon after they leave 221B, a young man knocks on the door and is very surprised to find the flat empty.

Chapter 8

 

A dozen more years slip by, skittering and sliding around and about them with the startling speed only time can muster. But there are no more comings and goings. The light doesn’t flicker. The worn carpet has been replaced. The stale air is refreshed by spring, warmed by summer, lightened by fall, cooled by winter.

John and Sherlock continue. They continue to pretend to live a quiet life tucked away at Baker Street, with John complaining about the plastic zipper bags of human lung tissue in the fridge and the ridiculous system that’s replaced the old chip and pin machines, and Sherlock playing his violin in the still heart of the night and organizing John’s pants in an incomprehensible index while John is working at the A&E during the day. They’re both slowing down, so gradually neither notices, until Sherlock needs an eight to be arsed to leave the flat after dark, and John’s knees are so bad that he holds on to both rails as he climbs the stairs, and finally starts to carry a cane. 

They spend more time at home – John throwing himself into writing their memoirs, and Sherlock composing more, reading more, refusing to help with the memoirs but critiquing every word John writes.

Lestrade retires. _Mycroft_ retires. 

John quits the A&E and schedules his first knee replacement. He doesn’t say he’s retired.

Molly’s daughter goes off to uni.

And one day, in late spring, John convinces Sherlock to go on holiday, and they leave together for a week on the coast. Before the week is out, they have decided – together – that this more peaceful existence with ocean breezes and paths meandering through the countryside is worth considering permanently.

They find a cottage, and buy a new sofa, and a table that’s never been used as a cutting board for human organs, and a bed so comfortable Sherlock actually considers sleeping in it.

Leaving 221B is the most difficult thing John has done in years.

The flat is impossibly large with its contents removed. It echoes as John walks through it one last time, as Sherlock waits impatiently at the door, anxious to move on, to install the promised hives. John stares at the emptiness, and when the curtain wafts in the breeze, he hears the melody of a mournful violin, smells burnt toast and tea, runs his fingers one last time over the faded wallpaper.

He imagines he hears the ghost of footfalls, Mrs. Hudson coming up the stairs, a client at her heels.

There are no clients, and no Mrs. Hudson, and the violin case is firmly in Sherlock’s hands as John closes the door and takes his time with the stairs. Outside, Sherlock lifts his hand, violin and all, to signal a cab, which pulls up mere seconds later, as if sent here to collect them by Mycroft Holmes himself.

Sherlock and John climb in and settle back, and both of them turn their eyes to watch Baker Street disappear as the cab rolls away.

Moments later, a young man, worn duffle on his shoulder, walks down Baker Street, but not this Baker Street. He’s in his twenties, trim, compact, confident. He approaches 221B, stands before the door, and reaches up to straighten the door knocker. He shakes his head, pauses, and looks upward briefly. A smile crosses his face, slow and wistful, and he reaches into his pocket and extracts a key.

He’s been gone three years – teaching in Japan after finishing at uni – and he’s tired after the flight, but so happy to be back in London. 

The key slides into the lock, turns easily, and the man pushes the door open and walks inside.

The entryway is quiet. They’ve changed out the carpeting – finally – and the old light fixture, too. The railings are polished – shiny with wear – and he runs his hand along one as he slowly climbs toward the familiar door.

Unable to contain the exuberant smile that grows across his face, he knocks. Four raps, two long, two short.

The flat is quiet. There are not footsteps from within, no sound of life at all. No telly, or radio, or violin. No voices raised in lively argument. 

They’re out. He should have expected it. They have their own lives, of course, and weren’t expecting him ‘til next week anyway.

He pushes open the door, and walks into a space both familiar and foreign.

He stands in place, mouth agape.

There’s not a stick of furniture in sight. Not a stray shoe, an empty teacup. No photos on the mantel, no sheet music littering the floor by the window. There’s no evidence of his life, of his childhood, of his fathers.

“John? Is that you?”

Liam whirls around to face a woman in the doorway. 

“Oh – I’m sorry.” There is a flash of recognition in the woman’s eyes as she sees his face, then it is gone. She looks confused. “Are you looking for John and Sherlock?”

“Yes – yes.” He looks past her, out the door. He wonders where Emily is – Mrs. Hudson’s niece. “They’re redecorating, then? Where are they staying?”

She smiles, shakes her head. “Not redecorating,” she says. “Retired.” She looks sad, but braves a smile. “Moved to Sussex. You’ve only just missed them.”

“Sussex?” He stares at her hard. “They’ve moved to Sussex?” His voice is raised. He is incredulous. “Is this a joke? They never mentioned moving at all, much less to Sussex! They love London – they’d never…they’d….”

“Fell in love with it on holiday this spring,” she says. “John has a view of the sea for his writing, and Sherlock has the hives.”

“Hives?” he stares at the woman – she’s Maureen, Mrs. Hudson’s great-niece, and she’s been living downstairs since her mother married and moved away two years ago.

She smiles. “His beehives. It’s all he’s talked about since I met him.”

“No. He can’t – he’s allergic. Horribly. To bees. Almost died once.” He’s becoming nearly panic-stricken. He pulls a mobile from his pocket. His hand shakes as he presses the numbers.

Maureen stares at him. “Who are you?” she says. 

“Liam Watson,” he answers, putting the phone to his ear. He falters. “Their son.”

A few seconds pass, then another, as the phone he is calling rings twice, three times. 

A smile breaks out across Liam’s face.

“Dad?”

_TBC_


	9. Beginnings and Endings and Beginnings Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end is the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has continued far longer than I ever planned it, but I've enjoyed every minute of it, and so appreciate all of your kudos and comments. If you need an explanation of the events in this final chapter (a Who's Who of POD) please let me know in the comments and I'll add one.

John’s obituary will not list Liam as his son. When he dies, a long time off – he has years ahead of him still, writing, walking beside Sherlock on well-worn country paths - Liam won’t mourn him.

Or perhaps he will.

Strange as it was, impossible as it seemed the first time Sherlock crossed over and found himself in the other Sherlock’s life, it’s stranger still for Liam, who is confronted with the deception that _they knew_.

They’ve _always_ known.

It is Liam who meets the returning cab outside of 221B. Liam who envelops John in a welcoming hug as he struggles out of the car. Liam who wraps his arms around Sherlock even as Sherlock desperately searches those hidden corners of his mind palace, senses jolted by the sight and smell and feel of the child turned man he’d tucked away so very long ago.

Sherlock hustles them inside and up the stairs, into the empty flat. It’s impossible to explain, for Liam to understand, for John to absorb, for Sherlock – the only one who _has_ all the pieces – to sort quickly enough through memories suppressed to avoid John’s gut-wrenching cry, or the fist that follows.

In the end, Sherlock’s nose and lip are bleeding, and Liam is curled in a corner, desperately trying not to hyperventilate, and John is off-kilter, laughing in all the wrong places, flexing his bruised knuckles as Sherlock sinks to the floor beside Liam and stretches an arm around the shaking shoulders.

In time, John will understand. In time, no time at all, really, he’ll forgive Sherlock his bravest act of love.

In time, Liam will believe. He’ll tell this John, this Sherlock, all the truths that run beneath his skin, the things he knows and lives and breathes but does not voice to his own dad, his own father. The hurts, the secrets, the joys, the fears. Words for this Sherlock, this John, to string together a life on the other side of somewhere, a life well-lived, a life apart.

Liam knows everything there is to know about John. Everything there is to know about Sherlock.

He _knows_ them inside, outside, and they don’t know him at all.

In time, Liam will slip away to the other side.

But first, first, as the daylight fades on this eve of their retirement, Liam picks up the violin Sherlock has abandoned by the door. He glances at Sherlock, who nods, then looks away, somehow knowing, somehow understanding.

Liam opens the achingly familiar case, removes the instrument he knows as well as his own face in the mirror, picks up the bow and walks to the window.

And plays.

A waltz, haunting and beautiful. One Sherlock recognizes, but does not know by name. It is a call to dance, and Sherlock stands, helps John to his feet, and holds out his hand.

They dance in the empty flat, on the bare wooden floor, to the strains of a waltz so familiar it aches, a composition that’s been playing through his head, unwritten, since the day he met John. Liam is at last, at last, at peace today, with Sherlock’s violin tucked beneath his chin, his eyes closed, his fingers alive, as magic fills the air.

Here with the violin breathing its welcome into the soul of this room, he is home at last. Home from Japan, yet so very, very far away.

ooOOOoo

As John rests his forehead on Sherlock’s shoulder, as he closes his eyes and breathes in the familiar, comforting smell of two and a half decades of love, he cannot see, and does not know, that somewhere in time, somewhere a half step and forever away (second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning), another young man, another Liam, has _finally_ found the father he never knew. Never knew because his mother never told John she was pregnant, disappeared the moment Sherlock returned after his fall.

This Liam raises his hand to knock on the door of the other 221B. He has no idea (no idea at all) what waits for him behind the door.

ooOOOoo

John’s obituary will not list Liam as his son.

Or perhaps it will.

 

_Fin_


End file.
